Discover the significance of rare-earth elements, their applications in technology, and the global race for their resources.

Can the rest of the world challenge Beijing’s dominance of high-performance magnets by developing new mining projects?

You are entirely forgiven for not knowing this, since they are not especially rare — cerium is about as common as copper. The problem is that they’re difficult to isolate and purify; it wouldn’t be ...

Here’s what you’ll learn when reading this story: For more than three decades, scientists have explored ways to leverage certain metal-producing powers of hyperaccumulators, a family of more than 700 ...

Rare earth elements are vital to new technologies and industry but hard to obtain. A new project led by UC Davis and funded by a grant from ARPA-E aims to develop acid-tolerant bacteria that can ...

Rare-earth metals have become a hot topic in the world, but is it a good idea to buy an ETF dedicated to the niche?

The waste left over from spent fossil fuel may contain a treasure trove of rare-earth elements worth billions of dollars. In a 2024 paper, geologists calculated that the waste ash from coal burnt in ...

Companies like Phoenix Tailings, which recently began producing metal in New Hampshire, are using new processing methods to ...

A new federally funded research project at the University of California, Davis, endeavors to extract valuable components for magnets, lasers and other modern technologies from an unlikely source: ...